Bandwagons – Did they ruin games?
Another moderately old one, not many more after this...
I know this is a tad bit different to usual in that it’s not a review, but instead I think this is a lot more interesting than my Metroid Prime Hunters review.
So we’ve had the announcement for an announcement for Modern Warfare 3, or MW3 as supposed leaked boxart names it. Along with that, we’ve got Battlefield 3, and already had Homefront, Crysis 2, and many other first person shootermabobs. I’ve also been thinking about buying A PS1 and a ton of old games for it, because they were undoubtedly so much better. It might just be me thinking differently now than before, but I’m certain it’s because of the high profitability and bandwagoning in the gaming industry. Put it this way – Call of Duty became popular. How many people then added in Call of Duty-type features into their games?
Lots. Even Halo: Reach seemed to have Call of Duty influences in it.
This really concerns me. Are we entering an age, as has already happened with music and film, where people are simply making them for profit, not to make a good game? I really hope not, but I think we are. Look at Modern Warfare 2 – undoubtedly a good game but was rushed at the last hurdle by Activision so that it would be released before the Christmas rush. It sold like crazy, but was a glitch fest at the end of it, though a pretty fun one at that. Same with other big releases – Fallout New Vegas, for example, and even The Orange Box on Ps3.
This worries me, and it’s why I’ve begun to side with developers like Bungie and Valve, who are committed to making games they enjoy, not games that will just sell like crazy because they’re shooters. As a result of their gamer work force, they know what we like to play, and they engineer games for fun, not realism as seems to be the case nowadays. That’s why I’m a big fan of Halo and Half Life.
Newer games all seem to fear breaking the mould and actually doing something different because games such as Okami or Mirrors edge that are unusual don’t sell well. People just won’t fund stuff like that now because you just don’t get a return on the money invested. And for that, I blame the gaming community as much as I do developers – The majority of people just want to shoot people in realistic, gritty environments, and that’s all that the majority of developers want to fund.
That’s why I applaud developers such as Valve that took risks with Portal – Portal sold moderately well (I think)and it’s a nice thing to hear, to be perfectly honest. It’s a shame that games that are a bit different don’t sell as well. The only other explanation I can think of is the ‘I’m not sure what it’ll be like, so I’ll buy it preowned’ approach, which obviously doesn’t help developers at all.
There’s good games out today that are new and somewhat follow the whole FPS movement that are really good, such as Battlefield Bad Company, which is one of my all time favourite ‘realistic’ shooters, but stuff that’s out today seems to generally be of a lower quality fun-wise than games that were on, say, the Ps1. I remember enjoying every game I owned on the Ps1/Early Ps2 days, regardless of graphics or anything – Everything was built from the ground up as a game, not a technical showcase as most games seem to be now. It’s sad, but true.
It’s like the games that are ‘smaller’ in terms of revenue seem to do better. Metroid Prime 3 and Twilight princess are two of my favourite games, but in the big scheme of things didn’t sell quite as well as some other major games did. Nintendo would have known this from day one, and the games are actually mostly fan service above all else. There isn’t a Zelda game every year, because they take time in ensuring that “this stuff’s damn ready before they release it into the wild” to quote Cave Johnson. This makes me happy, and makes it a good game.
I could go on for ages about this, but I don’t want to be taking up a large chunk of the magazine with this...
TL;DR: N00 ga3mz R teh sux, 8uy v4lv3 ga3ms bcu5 th3y r t3h w1n 4n th3y l00k af7ur they’re f4ns moar.
Another moderately old one, not many more after this...
I know this is a tad bit different to usual in that it’s not a review, but instead I think this is a lot more interesting than my Metroid Prime Hunters review.
So we’ve had the announcement for an announcement for Modern Warfare 3, or MW3 as supposed leaked boxart names it. Along with that, we’ve got Battlefield 3, and already had Homefront, Crysis 2, and many other first person shootermabobs. I’ve also been thinking about buying A PS1 and a ton of old games for it, because they were undoubtedly so much better. It might just be me thinking differently now than before, but I’m certain it’s because of the high profitability and bandwagoning in the gaming industry. Put it this way – Call of Duty became popular. How many people then added in Call of Duty-type features into their games?
Lots. Even Halo: Reach seemed to have Call of Duty influences in it.
This really concerns me. Are we entering an age, as has already happened with music and film, where people are simply making them for profit, not to make a good game? I really hope not, but I think we are. Look at Modern Warfare 2 – undoubtedly a good game but was rushed at the last hurdle by Activision so that it would be released before the Christmas rush. It sold like crazy, but was a glitch fest at the end of it, though a pretty fun one at that. Same with other big releases – Fallout New Vegas, for example, and even The Orange Box on Ps3.
This worries me, and it’s why I’ve begun to side with developers like Bungie and Valve, who are committed to making games they enjoy, not games that will just sell like crazy because they’re shooters. As a result of their gamer work force, they know what we like to play, and they engineer games for fun, not realism as seems to be the case nowadays. That’s why I’m a big fan of Halo and Half Life.
Newer games all seem to fear breaking the mould and actually doing something different because games such as Okami or Mirrors edge that are unusual don’t sell well. People just won’t fund stuff like that now because you just don’t get a return on the money invested. And for that, I blame the gaming community as much as I do developers – The majority of people just want to shoot people in realistic, gritty environments, and that’s all that the majority of developers want to fund.
That’s why I applaud developers such as Valve that took risks with Portal – Portal sold moderately well (I think)and it’s a nice thing to hear, to be perfectly honest. It’s a shame that games that are a bit different don’t sell as well. The only other explanation I can think of is the ‘I’m not sure what it’ll be like, so I’ll buy it preowned’ approach, which obviously doesn’t help developers at all.
There’s good games out today that are new and somewhat follow the whole FPS movement that are really good, such as Battlefield Bad Company, which is one of my all time favourite ‘realistic’ shooters, but stuff that’s out today seems to generally be of a lower quality fun-wise than games that were on, say, the Ps1. I remember enjoying every game I owned on the Ps1/Early Ps2 days, regardless of graphics or anything – Everything was built from the ground up as a game, not a technical showcase as most games seem to be now. It’s sad, but true.
It’s like the games that are ‘smaller’ in terms of revenue seem to do better. Metroid Prime 3 and Twilight princess are two of my favourite games, but in the big scheme of things didn’t sell quite as well as some other major games did. Nintendo would have known this from day one, and the games are actually mostly fan service above all else. There isn’t a Zelda game every year, because they take time in ensuring that “this stuff’s damn ready before they release it into the wild” to quote Cave Johnson. This makes me happy, and makes it a good game.
I could go on for ages about this, but I don’t want to be taking up a large chunk of the magazine with this...
TL;DR: N00 ga3mz R teh sux, 8uy v4lv3 ga3ms bcu5 th3y r t3h w1n 4n th3y l00k af7ur they’re f4ns moar.
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